Some People Seem To Think They Know Who The Villains Are In The Dark Knight Rises

Here are two stories, of varying credibility, about the potential “villain” roles in Chris Nolan’s next Batmovie, The Dark Knight Rises. We’ll start with the one I’m most doubtful of and move on to the less sketchy one afterwards.

Total Film have speculated, with no apparent inside info but a willingness to take a blind punt, that the film will be based upon Doug Moench’s Prey, a Batman story arc that was published in the Legends of the Dark Knight series. This fun bit of guessing has now morphed, over at Script Flags, into a claim that “a PR contact” involved with the film has confirmed that, actually, the film really is based on that particular comic book plot line.

Right. So a PR contact is leaking this info to Script Flags now? Before the script is even handed in to Warner Bros.? While we’re hearing that Tom Hardy didn’t even know what role he was auditioning for? Stranger things have happened.

The chief villainous roles in Prey, incidentally, are that of Hugo Strange and Catwoman.

We might infer a slightly more credible lead from a new Movieweb interview with Teresa Palmer. She’s the actress, if you recall, that won the role of Talia Al Ghul in George Miller’s aborted Justice League movie.

According to Ms. Palmer, she’s sent recently a message to Chris Nolan and Co. revealing that she’d be very much up for taking on the same role in The Dark Knight Rises. The story solidifies into something wobbly, as opposed to remaining no more than smoke, when she says:

It is the longest shot in history for sure but I’ve put my name out there with my agents and things. So we’ll see who ends up doing that role. My managers made the phone calls but I’m pretty sure that they will end up going with a big name girl.

…she genuinely seems to think that Talia Al Ghul will be a character in the film.

Now, she might know this for sure, perhaps through the Hollywood grapevine; on the other hand, she may have been reading her interviewer’s questions as confirmation that the role existed; or there’s several other shades of grey here too, running together – there’s certainly no hard and fast black and white. Not yet.